THE EDITOR: Who would have thought that nearly four months after the US rolled out covid19 vaccines for the five-11-year group and two months since World Health Organization approval that we would still be awaiting the vaccines here for the forgotten cohort of 150,000 children in that age group?
Why this inordinate delay? Meanwhile plans are full ahead to have this group attend school and move forward without protection from serious illness or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).
It is understood that there will be hesitancy, but those of us who are waiting for this vaccine are in a catch 22 situation. We have patiently kept our children home for two years and now the Ministry of Health suddenly deems it OK to send them to school on blind faith with still fairly high daily case numbers.
Everyone older was given the choice to vaccinate, but this group has not and school reopening is approaching. The availability of the paediatric vaccine worldwide is not as constrained as the adult versions are due to lower demand, therefore the delay is unexplained.
I hope we are not just waiting for donated vaccines to become available. If we can afford Carnival pods, we can certainly afford to buy our own vaccines for our children.
C ALEXANDER
Port of Spain
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